Beyond the Wire

‘...and when we lost them, not one by one but in the dozens, I would say: “not to worry lads, I’ll write us some replacements.”’ Alys Jones has authored a meta-fiction based on the First World War, a visual conversation with the poets and our collective historical knowledge of the years 1914-1918. Boundaries between fiction and reality are blurred. The content is heightened and redirected by the form of the pages, cut away as if explosions have torn the fabric of the narrative, revealing new image combinations, and generating new meaning. The book serves as a purgatory, a narrative no-man’s land for the characters, who inhabit a fictional narrative outside of ‘real time’. "A brilliant recreation of scenes from the Great War. Powerful, moving and critical. We need more like this in these dark modern times where the response to today's conflicts is invariably apathy or neo-jingoism." Pat Mills, Author of Charley's War (WIRE)